Spark, page 15
“I’ll never forget today as long as I live.” Twitch’s expression became serious. “The lammergeier is an extraordinary bird to see, especially in this country, but, for at least sixty seconds this morning, I thought you were dead. They were the worst sixty seconds of my life.” He shook his head. “Please don’t do that to me again.”
“I promise I won’t.” Jack gave him an apologetic smile, then glanced back over his shoulder to where he knew the vulture was still feeding. “But, you know, the vulture isn’t safe. Lady Goremore wants it for her collection. Peaky and Madden might come back – or worse, it could be Nick Skinner. We’re going to need everyone’s help to protect it.”
“Lady Goremore’s collection?” Twitch frowned. “What collection?”
Jack realized there was so much more that Twitch still needed to know. Sitting in the sunshine he filled his friend in on all the horrors of Mord Hall and the evil cunning of Nick Skinner.
“We need to assemble the Twitchers immediately,” Twitch got to his feet. “I’ve got Frazzle in the skywatch hide. He could take a message back to Aves Wood. Someone’s bound to be there this morning.”
“You brought Frazzle with you?”
“I was going to send him back to the hide with a message if I saw the bearded vulture. I tested him on Monday when you were at Mord Hall. He made it back to the hide pigeon coop no problem. That’s another reason why I went back when the storm broke: to bring Frazzle home.” Twitch looked at his watch. “We should go. We’ve been here for hours. We’re trespassing and we don’t want to get caught up in a hunt.”
“I don’t want to leave the lammergeier on Goremore land,” Jack said, groaning as he stood up. His body was stiff and sore.
“Let’s scare it away. Try to make it fly somewhere safe.”
The two boys ran at the rock where the lammergeier was finishing up the last bits of the rabbit, hollering, whooping and clapping their hands. The vulture lifted its head, looked at them scornfully as though they were fools, before beating its powerful wings, taking to the air and rising into the clear sky. Twitch and Jack ran over the heath yelling at it, trying to drive the bird towards Passerine Pike and off the Mord Estate. Jack had no idea if it was working. The bird looked too high to hear them, and flew in circular patterns, so it seemed to be moving away but then returning.
When they reached the fence, they saw the lammergeier was circling Passerine Pike, and quickly helped each other over.
“Look.” Twitch pointed and smiled. “Birdwatchers, come to see the lammergeier. It’s safe whilst they have it in their sights.”
The trail of people hiking up Passerine Pike had spotted the bird and were running. There were at least ten keen birders at the top already, binoculars hanging from their necks, tripods set up, all their eyes and cameras on the huge soaring bird above them.
“But this is great,” Jack said, as they made their way round to the gap in the rocks and the entrance to the skywatch hide. “Nick Skinner can’t attack the vulture while all these people have their binoculars and cameras trained on it. Too many witnesses.”
“So as long as the vulture carries on its journey towards the sea, and doesn’t fly back to the Mord Estate, it should be safe,” Twitch said. “Unless Nick Skinner is the kind of person who would chase it?”
“He is,” Jack said, remembering Lady Goremore’s words about the thrill of the chase. “I wonder what Peaky and Madden will do, now that they think I’m dead.”
“D’you think they’ll tell Nick Skinner?” Twitch said, unzipping the tent and climbing inside the skywatch hide.
“I don’t know. I hope not. He’s not the kind of person you want to upset. They’re frightened of him and I don’t blame them.” Jack knew that Nick Skinner would be very angry when he found out what had happened. The longer the gamekeeper didn’t know who he was, or that the lammergeier was safe, the better. “We’ve got Nick Skinner’s gun as evidence,” he said, slowly, thinking aloud, “but it won’t help convict anyone of attempting to murder the lammergeier. The rabbits weren’t poisoned because we stopped that. I’ve got audio recordings of Peaky and Madden talking, but they don’t really discuss Lady Goremore or Nick Skinner. They’re the guilty people behind this plot. I mean Peaky and Madden are the evil cat killers, but Lady Goremore and Nick Skinner are plotting to murder a protected bird.”
“If only we could make them confess,” Twitch said, pulling a silver capsule from one of the pockets of his combat trousers. He unscrewed it, took out a rolled-up piece of paper and handed it to Jack with a stub of pencil from another pocket. “What should we say?”
Jack thought for a second and then wrote: Twitchers! Flock to the hide IMMEDIATELY. The lammergeier is here and in danger! T&J
Twitch rerolled the paper and slipped it inside the silver canister before screwing the lid back on. Taking a ribbon of Velcro, he looped it through a slit, then he opened the square wicker basket beside him and took out Frazzle, his favourite pet pigeon.
Jack was always in awe of the way Twitch handled birds. He made it look easy, but Jack knew from experience that it wasn’t. When he tried to pick up Twitch’s pigeons they’d flutter away, becoming jumpy, and more than once he’d almost fallen from the viewing platform of the hide trying to grab one.
“Could you strap the message to Frazzle’s leg?”
Jack attached the Velcro strap around the thin pink scaly ankle of the goggle-eyed bird. “Let’s hope someone’s at the hide and can get the word out.”
The boys poked their heads out of the tent. The crowd of birdwatchers had grown. The Pike was surrounded. People were looking up, exclaiming excitedly and pointing.
The boys clambered out with their rucksacks on their backs, and Twitch holding Frazzle protectively against his stomach.
The lammergeier was perched proudly on the top of the Pike, looking majestic.
“What’s it doing?” Jack asked Twitch anxiously. “We need it to keep flying that way.”
“Vultures aren’t pigeons,” Twitch said, “you can’t tell them where to fly. It’s probably digesting breakfast.” He walked away from the crowd and released Frazzle. The boys watched the pigeon arc before getting his bearings and heading towards Aves Wood.
Jack looked back at the lammergeier, then nervously swept the landscape for any sign of Nick Skinner. “It’s a sitting target up there.”
When they reached the car park at the bottom of Passerine Pike, Jack saw Twitch’s bike locked to the railing.
“You ride it,” Twitch said, taking off the lock. “You’re tired and hurt.”
Gratefully, Jack did as he was told. He said he felt fine, but he couldn’t stop shivering. He suppressed the wave of exhaustion that threatened to crash over him. He wasn’t going to rest until they’d worked out how to bring Peaky and Madden to justice and had a plan to protect the lammergeier from Lady Goremore and Nick Skinner. He wanted them to be punished for what they had done to the birds in that horrible room in Mord Hall, and for attempting to murder the bearded vulture.
The floodwaters were almost drained away. There was barely five centimetres of water on the ground in town. When they reached the canal towpath, Twitch locked the bike to the railing and the boys splashed along the path to the kissing gate.
“How’s the hide looking?” Jack asked, as they entered the sodden nature reserve.
“The lake has shrunk, but the hide is still a good fifteen centimetres deep in water. A lot of the soil that was shoring up the walls has been washed away. We’re going to have to do some serious renovations.”
Jack knew Twitch could navigate Aves Wood with his eyes closed, but he was impressed at how his resourceful friend had laid down ferns and sticks, creating a solid path across the marshiest bits of the route, so as not to drop waist-deep in water or get stuck in slurping sinking mud.
“The camouflage is gone,” Jack observed with alarm when their base came into view. “People will be able to find our hide!”
“Who? We’re the only people in the nature reserve,” Twitch pointed out. “Everybody is at home worrying about their houses and possessions.”
“Oh, Jack!” Tara called out, as the boys splashed through the water towards her. “What’s happened to you? Are you OK?”
Jack turned to Twitch. “Do I look that bad?”
“Your cheek is swollen and bruised. Your lips are turquoise. You’ve bags under your eyes. You’re covered in mud and ash, oh, and your hair’s a mess.”
“Mum’s going to be furious.” Jack sighed. “Oh, by the way, I told her—”
“You stayed at mine last night?”
“How did you guess?” Jack laughed as Twitch put an arm around his shoulders and they went into the hide together.
“I got your message from Frazzle,” Tara said. “Is it true? The lammergeier’s here?”
“Yes, did you tell the others?” Twitch asked.
Tara nodded. “I ran out to the bridge to get phone signal and sent a message. They’re all on their way.”
“Hey!”
They turned around at Terry’s shout and saw him and Ozuru splashing towards the hide.
“Jack!” Terry’s eyes searched his face.
“Twitch knows everything,” Jack reassured him.
“Oh, phew, ’cause I couldn’t hold it all in, and told Ozuru on the way here.”
“I don’t believe it!” Ozuru said, looking astonished. “It’s true?”
“Right now, the lammergeier is perching on Passerine Pike,” Twitch said, beaming.
“Is it safe?” Terry asked.
“It is for now,” Twitch said. “There are loads of birdwatchers with their eyes on it. They’ll log its location on the rare birds website. The big danger is if the vulture goes back onto the Mord Estate.”
“I put the sweets in the box yesterday, like we planned,” Terry said to Jack. “Did it work?”
“We should wait till everyone’s here,” Jack replied, but he was grinning and nodding.
A minute later, they heard the splashing of hurried footsteps. Ava burst into the hide, carrying Tippi on her back. “Jack!” she cried, letting Tippi drop. “Are you all right? What happened? Did they hurt you?” She put her hand up to his bruised cheek. “Did you get the evidence?” She suddenly became aware that everyone was staring at her.
Tippi made a couple of kissing sounds, but Ava shut her up with a glare.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Twitch said. “I need to feed Frazzle and send him home. I’m training him to nest at mine but eat at the hide, so that he knows two homes. He was starving when I let him go this morning.”
“We can sit on the platform and Jack can tell us everything,” Terry said.
Once all seven of them were sitting with their backs to the tree trunk and their legs crossed or dangling over the edge, Jack outlined the case, producing the slingshot and the gun. Terry and Ava chimed in when he missed details, but Jack ended his story with a description of the evidence he’d gathered last night, and explained that Peaky and Madden thought he was dead.
Terry howled with laughter at Jack’s description of his death scene. “Oh man, I’d have paid money to see it! Brilliant!”
“But the vulture’s not safe,” Jack said. “Lady Goremore wants it for her collection and it’s sitting a stone’s throw from her land.”
“That woman is a monster,” Tara said angrily.
“She’s evil,” Twitch agreed.
“You were amazingly brave last night,” Ava said.
“This isn’t over,” Jack warned. “We need to make sure they don’t get near that lammergeier …”
“… and that they never attack any bird ever again,” Terry insisted.
“… and that they get punished for their crimes,” Ava added.
“How are we going to do that?” Ozuru asked. “Lady Goremore is powerful.”
“We’ve got evidence,” Jack said. “The pictures and the recordings.”
“We’re going to need more,” Twitch said.
“How about …” Jack said, as an idea rose from the dead and stalked into his mind with arms outstretched, “a confession!”
“How would you get a confession from people like that?” Twitch looked doubtful.
“They are bad.” Tippi nodded furiously.
“Listen,” Jack said. “Tomorrow night is Halloween, right? The scariest night of the year, when the dead come to life and haunt the living…”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Terry asked. “Why are you grinning?”
“Peaky and Madden think I’m dead. If we can keep them thinking that, I might be able to frighten a confession out of them.”
“But,” Terry interjected, “as soon as they go to the shooting butt and find you’re not there, they’ll realize you’re alive.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Dead boys tend to end up on the news,” Tara pointed out.
“We only need them to believe I’m dead till tomorrow night, till the Goremore Halloween Ball.” Jack’s imagination was crackling with lightning. “We’ll make posters, with a picture of me, saying that I’m missing, and stick them to the lampposts near Peaky’s and Madden’s houses.”
“Won’t your parents freak out?” Ozuru asked. “Mine would.”
“I’ll tell them it’s part of a Halloween prank we’re playing. They know I love Halloween.”
“Me and Tippi can make the posters,” Ava said. “Nan’ll help us. She’s got a printer on the boat.”
“I’m good at posters,” Tippi said enthusiastically.
“You won’t be able to go home,” Twitch pointed out. “You live too close to Peaky. He could see you. You can stay with me tonight, if you like.”
“Thanks.” Jack grinned; he loved staying over at Twitch’s. “I don’t suppose you’ve got hot water, do you? I told Mum I was going to yours for a bath last night.”
They laughed as Jack held out his hands and looked down at his clothes. He was a mess.
“Ava and I will knock on Peaky’s and Madden’s doors and say we’re part of a local search effort to find you,” Terry said. “Ava can ask them if they’ve seen you recently, and I’ll try to speak then burst into tears.” The Twitchers all turned to stare at him. “What! I can make myself cry whenever I want to. It’s a trick I learned when I was little, to get my big brothers into trouble.”
“What if Peaky and Madden go back to the shooting butt?” Twitch said.
“I’m sure they will,” Jack said. “I would. But I wouldn’t go in daylight when anyone could see me. I’d wait till tonight, when it was dark.” He grinned. “But we’ll have got there first. Twitch, do you think Constable Greenwood would help us?”
“Probably. He’s a kind man and he likes birds.”
“Good, then you and I are going to pay him a visit as soon as we’re done here. We’ll need the help of the police if we’re going to get justice for the birds and the cats.”
“What about me?” Ozuru asked. “What can I do?”
“You and Tara have the most important job of all. You must go immediately to the skywatch hide and watch over the lammergeier. We need to be certain it doesn’t go back to the Mord Estate. And I need you to keep an eye on the shooting butt, until we get there. If you see Peaky and Madden near it, we need to know. The plan won’t work if they get there before we do.”
“Got it.” Ozuru nodded.
“Brilliant.” Tara beamed, excited to see the vulture.
“Right.” Jack clapped his hands together. “Twitch and I need to get to Constable Greenwood’s house as quickly as possible.”
“But what about the rest of the plan?” Tara asked.
“I’m still working it out,” Jack admitted, “but it’s going to be spooktacular!”
By the time they arrived at Constable Greenwood’s house it was mid-afternoon. Jack had called his mum and explained that he and Twitch wanted to get ready for Halloween together. He told her to ignore the posters saying he was missing because they were doing a prank on their classmates, and he begged to stay one more night with Twitch, so they could make their costumes for trick-or-treating. Eventually she’d given in to his pleading.
“We must hurry,” Jack said as Twitch rang the doorbell. “We need to get to the shooting butt and set it up before it’s dark.”
The door opened.
“Hello, boys,” Constable Greenwood said, smiling down at them. He was in jeans, a blue jumper and grandad slippers and didn’t look like a police officer at all. “What are you two doing on my doorstep? Found any more bank robbers?” He chuckled at his own joke.
“I hope we’re not bothering you,” Twitch said. “Only we’ve got something we urgently need to talk to you about. Don’t we, Jack?”
Jack nodded, spying steel-toe-capped boots in the shoe rack and a police jacket with reflective strips hanging on a coat hook. “It’s about a murder plot.”
Constable Greenwood’s eyebrows shot up. “If it’s the police you’re wanting, you should go to the station. I’m off-duty today.”
“We don’t need the police,” Jack replied. “At least, not yet. We need advice about the things that are illegal and the right way to go about certain things.”
Constable Greenwood blinked trying to make sense of this cryptic statement. “You’d better come in then. I was about to start making dinner, but I can give you ten minutes. I’d hate to think of you boys getting mixed up in a murder plot because I hadn’t put you straight on the law.”
“Don’t worry,” Twitch said, as they entered Constable Greenwood’s cosy living room. “It’s not us. We’re not the ones doing something illegal.” He glanced at Jack. “At least, I don’t think we are.”
A French bulldog was asleep on a rug beside a wood burner. He opened his eyes and looked at them, wagged his tail a couple of times, but was too comfy to bother with a boisterous greeting.
“Well, that is a relief.” Constable Greenwood indicated they should sit on his sofa. He sank into an armchair opposite. “What’s this all about then?”
